by Joel Dane
“Why are you still here?” Cali grunts at Basdaq. “You’re management track.”
“Politics,” he says, as a quartermaster cart shunts forward.
“M’bari?” Voorhivey asks. “Does this feel off-track?”
“Maybe,” M’bari says.
Pico shoots me a glance. A maybe from M’bari means something is wrong. I give him a shrug. Like there’s no time to worry about it now, with the cart distributing specialist gear.
I’m not given a shoulder-mounted rampart gun this time. I’m given a pinpoint Boaz, a camo-skin, a Vespr sidearm, and a trenchknife. Looks like I’m on recon. Me and Jagzenka. Corporate guidelines recommend a minimum four-unit team for straight recon, with one two-unit pair covering the other as it advances. In the event of a personnel shortage, the recommendation is a triangle team, with a point unit advancing, covered by the other legs of the triangle.
Apparently this isn’t straight recon, because it’s just the two of us.
This isn’t straight anything.
We’re deploying on emergency status into a hot conflict against an adversary we’ve never even seen. Why send us, two weeks before we train for it? How do lampreys launch surprise attacks? Why send a half-trained squad?
Well, that last one is easily answered. We’re close, and we’re expendable.
CHAPTER 31
We strap down in a troop transport and launch into the sky. Calil-Du is bristling to my right, tense and enraged—because rage is what she feels instead of sorrow. Ting presses against my left side for comfort, silent for once though her fingers are twitching and she’s breathing junkie fast. Pico keeps checking his Boaz and Shakrabarti keeps saying, “No warning? How do they attack inside an enclave without any warning?”
At first I almost enjoy the shock of adrenaline, and then the jitters start. I flow myself calm. I envision fractal blooms shapeshifting in my eyes and my meditation washes over me. I’m a ripple in the current, a gust in the hurricane, a molecule in the terrafixing. You can’t die in your first firefight if your body is just one oddly shaped expression of the ever-evolving environment . . .
Out of nowhere, Voorhivey says, “I saw a PDM attack once, in my home enclave.”
“I remember peedeeyams!” Ting says. “They’re, um, bio-film weapons developed in the SICLE War. Flappy exploding bat-things.”
“Moths,” Pico says.
“Wafting across the rooftops like a bad dream,” Voorhivey continues. “Everyone panicked, waiting for the Garda, the Army. Except my mother. Tiny little woman, the size of Jag.”
“Still bigger’n you,” Jag mutters.
“She didn’t have her suit or a harness. She climbs the scaffolding with a stunstick and she—she fought the moths single-handed until the Garda rolled up. All I want is to make her proud.”
Cali punches his shoulder reassuringly. “Just don’t fuck up.”
“Remember your first day of training?” Basdaq asks Voorhivey, in his deep rumble. “I’ve never seen anyone so nervous. But now? You’re a machine. A well-oiled machine.”
“Specifically,” Pico says, “a vibrator.”
Laughter breaks the tension, and when Admin enters our bay from the fore hatch, we’re still smiling. He’s wearing combat gear for the first time I’ve seen, and we greet him with a raucousness that doesn’t hide our relief.
“Nobody’s shipping you into combat without a manager you know,” Admin tells us, after we settle down. “The public story is this: a cataphract is hitting the Los Anod enclave. Lampreys are not officially recognized, and any public mention of them will be met with extreme sanction, confirm.”
“Confirm!”
“Unofficially, though? We’re up.”
Cali slaps her palm against her Boaz. “Final-fucking-lutely.”
“This is trial by fire,” Admin tells us. “We’re one of twenty-two platoons reinforcing the perimeter. Chances are we won’t clap eyes on a hostile, which is a good thing, considering none of us know what they look like.”
“N-not even you, Admin?” Ting asks.
“We are racked and stacked and—” His lens gleams. “—we drop in nine.”
“We’re dropping?” Voorhivey asks, an edge of excitement in his voice. “Like paraframe dropping?”
“Pulses are still popping, knocking out tech. The enclave defense are throwing everything at the hostile. This transport’s got paleo backups, but I don’t aim to crash before we get there.” Admin’s gaze sweeps us. “Our job is recon, harassment, and interdiction. If we make contact with a hostile, we pin it down until the primary assault force arrives, confirm.”
“Confirm!”
“Who’s the primary force?” Jag asks.
“Special-ops units who’ve trained for this.” Admin sweeps us with a bland gaze. “If we see a lamprey, we keep it in place until they arrive. You know this shit. You practiced H-and-I exercises a hundred times.”
“Harassment comes naturally,” Pico says.
“What are these things, Admin?” Ridehorse asks.
“Doesn’t matter,” Admin says, and I see in his eyes that he’s afraid. “We do our job, that’s all.”
“C’mon, prez,” Pico wheedles. “You can’t send us out there without gossip.”
Admin adjusts his body armor. “Gossip’s all I have. Whispers about attacks without warning, lightning strikes by a regenned fumigant system.”
“A fumigant,” I say, flatly. “The terrafixing reanimated a fumigant?”
“There’s nothing on MYRAGE about it,” Ting pipes up.
“If it’s a fumigant, how come we’re not suited?” Basdaq asks.
“There’ve been no toxins,” Admin says. “Not in any of the encounters. So no, this isn’t a fumigant. The whispers are wrong. Nobody knows what it is.”
“You think that’s true?” Voorhivey asks him, cracking his knuckles. “Nobody knows?”
“I think the trash on the ground doesn’t change the janitor’s job.”
“We’re missing two weeks of training,” Basdaq says.
“Why bother telling us anything?” Elfano grumbles, her long ears flattening against her head. “We’re just soldiers.”
“Basdaq’s right,” M’bari says, and looks at Admin. “We need more.”
“Fine.” Admin takes a breath. “This is all I’ve seen.”
At his command, a projection appears against the transport wall. A meaty pink glow coalesces into an uneven sphere with white marbling.
“That’s a lamprey?” Cali asks.
The sphere revolves, revealing that its skin is a patchwork of plates shifting around a hollow core. “Thirty to forty feet tall on average,” Admin says. “With strands that extend as much as a few hundred yards.”
One of the white streaks in the lamprey shoots out like a whip, and I see that the sphere isn’t entirely hollow. A tangled framework of cords stretches across the interior, with thick nodes and bulging burls.
“Looks organic,” Basdaq says.
“The residue is inert,” Admin says. “And unclassifiable. The corpos don’t know what they are, or how to fight them. That’s job one. Get a viable sample.”
“They don’t look so scary,” Ting says, and I hear a stemhead wobble in her voice.
“Apparently in person they’re more disturbing,” Admin says. “Though you’ve been trained for that, at least.”
“They’d look kickass on MYRAGE,” Shakrabarti says. “A nice change from killing the same old remorts and technopaths.”
“And that, gens,” Admin says, “is all I know.”
Cali shrugs. “So if we see a huge pustule, we pop it.”
“Incorrect,” Admin tells her. “We keep it in place until the primary assault force pops it.”
He cuts the projection and flashes deployment information on our lenses: we’re d
ropping outside the south wall of Los Anod, into a mile-wide ledge of rolling parkland that’s fifty floors above ground. We’re tasked with sweeping our sector for hostiles, tagging them for strikes when possible. Engaging them when necessary.
Straightforward enough, if we knew what we were fighting.
My lens goes battle-live, breaking our squad into fire teams of three soldiers each, except recon is just two of us: I’m Tet-1, team leader; Jagzenka is Tet-2. Admin distributes ammo cans and we arm our weapons. Ting runs com checks, steadier than before. As I crouch on a drop-pad, I listen to the sweep schedule for low-orbit observation and support and watch the platoon position updates stream.
The one-minute mark flashes.
Thirty seconds.
Ten, nine, eight . . .
Cali screams in fierce joy when we drop through the moonlight. Pico laughs, and I flow into meditation, just enough to keep myself calm. I’m not scared of heights if there’s a nice solid balcony underfoot, but I almost fainted the first time we dropped, watching the Earth rise to swat me like a bug.
After a lifetime in freefall, my paraframe wings extend.
I flick to night vision and we swoop in formation over a landscape from my childhood: urban meadows and trees and streams. When my squad lands on a balcony lawn surrounded by woods, the scent of sweetgrass breaks my heart. Moonlight trickles through a canopy of trees, and a memory flashes: I’m sneaking along leafy alleys of Vila Vela on a mission for my grandmother.
The flash fades as I catch glimpses of other squads dropping into position around the walls of Los Anod.
I shuck my paraframe beside Basdaq’s mod-cart—paraframes reconfigure into field support structures—then glance to Admin for direction. He’s huddling with Ting, because he’s not stupid. In theory he’s handling signals and drones while Ting is on coms and countermeasures, but she’s better at signals than he is. Even twitchy, Ting plays with signals like sunlight plays with waves.
Everything looks clean—no prox-mines, no ambushes—so Admin flashes the green.
Cali and Ridehorse and Basdaq are on point. Elfano prowls across the lawn behind them, strapped into a paleo-adapted meka that looks like a melted crab. The looming wall normally allows access to the park, but it’s currently lowered and bristling with defunct security.
“Something pulsed the fuck out of this,” Cali says. “Whatever’s in there is rocking heavy tech.”
“The defenders did the pulsing,” M’bari tells her. “To buy a little time.”
“There was a regular pulse,” Ting says, frowning over her com-plate. “But there’s something else.”
“What?” Jag asks.
“Signal interference. A dead zone, I don’t know.”
“We trained for this,” Basdaq says. “We’re better with paleo tech than anyone.”
Elfano lenses him an obscene picture. She lives for mekinfantry and hates her low-tech gear. But a strong enough pulse turns high-tech mekas into funeral urns, so she’s trained on paleo versions with meager capacities.
Admin pings for attention and we fan forward. The enclave wall rises sixty feet overhead, an arc of reinforced alloy with floral etchings. Powerless turrets droop toward the ground, where skarab drones litter the grownstone paths.
“That’s serious security,” Ridehorse says. “This place is buffed like a beast.”
“‘Buffed like a beast’ is Cali’s dream lover,” Shakrabarti lenses.
“She’s living the nightmare now,” Pico says. “Since her commander-in-sheets flew off to the Flensers.”
“Lick me,” Cali says, flipping him an armored finger.
“Fire team Gimmel deployment drop successful,” Voorhivey reports, his voice squeaky like he’s reverting to his slipper self. “Fire team Gimmel approaching enclave.”
Nobody pauses. We keep trotting toward the wall. Yet somehow every one of us side-eyes Voorhivey.
“We know, prez,” Pico tells him. “We’re right here.”
“Sorry.” Voorhivey flushes. “I forgot to report in. We’re supposed to confirm that we landed and I—”
“The enclave is dark,” Admin says, as we reach the closed gate. “Maybe from the pulse, maybe from the hostiles. We’ve got exterior authorization. We’re popping these gates and going inside.” Schematics appear on my lens, along with tandem deployment plans. “Gimmel, Wu, clear a path. We need eyes. Tet, that’s you, with Shi covering. Confirm.”
As the other fire teams work the gate, I confirm and give Jagzenka the go sign. Her camo-skin extrudes a helmet like a hardened balaclava. With a portable power source and minimal tech, our suits will function unless we’re hit by a directed pulse.
Jag’s edges blur into the night. Camo-skin doesn’t turn you invisible, but it breaks your silhouette and damps your signals: your temperature, your brain waves, your exhalant. Except even paleo suits crash. Everything crashes, and camo-skin is crap as battle armor.
One hit with anything bigger’n a shell-gun and we’re down.
Which adds an edge of terror to the thrill of my first real deployment. At least Jag and I are a good team, even if we’re missing the third leg of the triangle. She’s small and quick, with a prey animal’s cunning. I’m too big for recon, but I spent a lifetime dodging bullets in Vila Vela, and I’ve never forgotten the lessons of my youth.
When I switch on, my skin covers me. “Tet-One active,” I murmur.
“Tet-Two active,” Jag says.
“Tet-Proxy responding,” Ting says, and it’s strange to hear her being terse and professional.
“You know the phrase open a can of worms?” Admin asks.
“Worms like . . . worms?” Calil-Du asks.
“You mean a can can?” Pico asks, shifting his Boaz into position. “Worm ammunition?”
Ridehorse says, “What kind of person would do that?”
“Kids these days,” Admin mutters. “Okay, Ting, give us ingress.”
Ting enters command lines. A moment later, the Los Anod gate tilts downward like a domino being flicked by God’s finger. When the film parts, urgent signals from inside the enclave blast across my display.
Forces are moving fast toward the gate.
Toward us.
Two hundred people stampede closer. The splash and clatter of small-arms fire bursts from the enclave, along with hoarse screams and a billow of smoke. At least it’s probably smoke. My lens doesn’t alert me to the presence of an aerosolized weapon.
“Alert!” Voorhivey shouts. “We’re under attack!”
“Gutterdamnerung,” Ridehorse mutters on-channel.
“Find cover,” Admin says, his voice clipped. “Hold your fire.”
My lens blurs with suggested locations to shelter outside the wall. I ignore the recommendations and gesture Jag toward the gate-housing, a deep vertical slot in the wall. She doesn’t bother acknowledging; she just squeezes into place and vanishes, going as still as a CEO’s heart.
I feel a flash of jealousy at her size and dive to the grownstone at her feet, aligned with ruts on the ground. With all the smoke and panic, my camo-skin makes me easy to overlook . . . as long as nobody’s looking.
“They’re civilians!” Admin calls, then switches to lensing: “Approaching forces are friendlies. Confirm. Do not engage. Confirm.”
I ping confirmation but don’t lower the needle-gun in my hand. A Vespr has zero stopping power and shitty range, but it’s paleo: low-tech enough to shrug off pulses. It’s an ambush weapon, and Calil-Du hates the sight of it. Still, two inches of needle piercing a seam of your battlesuit will kill you without a whisper.
“They don’t look so friendly to me, prez,” Pico says.
“Hey, there, Los Anod shareholders,” Admin says, his amplified voice suddenly casual and almost jokey. “My name is Stal McFaisal, and behind me that’s my squad, rolling out of Dekka Base
Twel—”
A howl drowns out his words and the mob screams toward us, accompanied by the swooshing launch of anti-armor missiles. Maybe they’re friendly, but they’re still armed—and terrified.
“I’m going to piss myself now,” Ridehorse says on-channel, “and avoid the rush.”
CHAPTER 32
The missiles streak away from us, vanishing into the enclave. Impact strikes make the street tremble and the sky burn. Too close. They’re firing at a target so close that they’re inside the damage radius of their own missiles.
And so are we.
A shock wave punches my face and makes my ears ring. The crowd howls in pain. Civilians stagger and panic as a Garda section tries to keep the peace, flanking the crowd in four-wheeled Jitneys with drone mounts. The mob is frenzied with fear. They pound through the gate, desperate to flee the enclave and lose themselves in the parkland balcony.
Elfano’s meka leaps in front of my squad and Voorhivey lays down a rampart. The crowd’s terror raises goose bumps on my skin, strained voices screaming about cataphracts, about death.
Admin steps forward to address the rampaging mob. I lose visual contact behind a whirling of boots and legs, but I hear him say, “We’re here to keep you safe! To organize a safe departure from the enclave. Please move forward in a—watchoutdown!”
There’s a chatter of pop-shots, and then Admin falls silent and Cali roars, “Get Gazi, get Gazi!” But Gazi is gone, into managerial training.
“Ting!” Ridehorse snaps. “Call a medipod, now!”
I piggyback onto M’bari’s visuals and see Admin on the ground, curled in a spreading pool of blood. My ear fills with shocked chatter, everyone speaking at once, our channel discipline forgotten.
“He’s shot!”
“Why—why did they—”
“He jumped a live weapon,” M’bari says, flashing an image on squad channel: someone in the mob dropped a freestyle sidearm that bounced and spun, spraying munitions until Admin covered it with his body.
“I’m gonna homicide those fuckers,” Cali snarls, but she doesn’t upsling her Boaz.